Slivers of Memory

© Oonah V Joslin

Mildred and Jas began to clear the dishes.

“I'll help with that dears,” said Auntie Bertha, and they let her. You need something to do after burying your sister.

Todd and Ed were outside seeing with beers and talking low, the way you do at funerals. The windows were all open.

“…good turn-out.”

“Yes. The old lady would have been pleased.”

“D'you remember Granddad planting that apple tree?”

“We helped.”

“We just got in the way,” Todd laughed. He always prided himself that, being a year and a half older, he remembered things that much better. That was how the arguments always began – not that they ever came to blows but they usually parted in sullen mood. “D'you remember Granddad's car?”

“Oh, yes! The smell of leather and polished walnut…”

“The way it always shone. He kept it spotless.”

“And the silver paintwork…”

“It was black.”

“Silver.”

“They didn't have silver back in 1962, Ed.”

“Well, they must have Todd, otherwise why would I remember it being silver?”

“Because it always shone! I don't think you even knew your colours yet.”

“Did!”

“You were two! I was nearly four.”

“Here we go,” said Mildred to the other women, “They're at it again about that damned car.”

“What's so important about that car anyway?” remarked Jas. “You'd think it was life and death to them.”

“Maybe it saves them dealing with the truth,” said Auntie Bertha, and there was a tone in her voice that suggested anger. “Or maybe they don't remember the truth.”

“Auntie Bertha, do you remember that car?”

“I even have a photograph of it,” she said. “Mildred, upstairs in the bottom of my wardrobe, there's a shoe box nearly as old as Todd. Go and get it, Dear.”

“It was silver,” Ed was saying.

“You used to say everything was silver, Ed. It was an obsession. What colour's the sky, Ed? – Silver. You even thought beans were silver – wouldn't eat them unless Grandma agreed with you.”

This always embarrassed Ed because that was one thing he did remember, plus it gave weight to his brother's argument. But he had a clear picture in his head of a silver car and red and leather seats.

Mildred came down clutching the box. Auntie Bertha rummaged through and found the photo, ignoring everything else in the box and the girls' persistent questions.

Jas shouted the men to come inside. They sat at the table and passed the photo from hand to hand. There was Granddad, standing proudly by the driver's side and Grandma, looking younger than any of them remembered and there was the car. The windows of the house reflected off its polished surface, scudding clouds danced on the roof, the apple tree, small and laden was a distorted bonsai in its windscreen, but the photograph was in monochrome. There was no telling what colour the car was.

All eyes turned to Auntie Bertha.

“You want the truth?” she said. “The truth is that your Granddad was a drunk, who beat his wife and thought nothing of taking his teenage daughter and two grandchildren for a ride in the lake whilst under the influence. If Constable Buick hadn't spotted bubbles coming to the surface, that's where you'd all have finished up – same as him, damn him. There! I swore to your Grandma I'd never say a word while she lived and now she's gone. The only silver you saw , Ed was the surface of the lake as you went under. You had nightmares for years – wouldn't close your eyes because there was red on the inside. Todd, the black car you rode in was at your mother's funeral a year later – she just couldn't live with it all, poor soul. This car was two-tone blue and it's still at the bottom of Tanstanley Water as far as I know.”

Auntie Bertha got up stiffly and looked into the photograph. “I'm sorry, Emmy,” she said, “It's just time to lay everything to rest.”